Beginnings
by just another great gatsby
Summary: A series of oneshots. UPDATE 2: Haikus wind up in odd places, Cuddy gets pissed, and House lets out his bottled up emotions... all over Wilson's desk. [HouseWilson]
1. The BreakIn

Pairing: House/Wilson

Rating: K+

Warnings: Fluff, probably OOC.

Disclaimer: You know the drill.

Notes: This will probably be sort of a series of oneshots, all focusing on one event when Wilson or House think they might have "known."

Review!! Constructive crit is encouraged. Wink, wink. Oh, and I don't have a beta. Anyone interested?

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* * *

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**Beginnings**

Every day, Wilson has a new opinion of "when he knew." Today, he's decided he realized it two years ago in August, at a ridiculously early hour-- or late, depending on how you looked at it.

He'd been up way longer than he'd planned that night mulling over paperwork, and so was struck with angry disbelief and extrordinary pissiness when, at no earlier than four thirty-two in the morning, his sleepy, cotton-stuffed mind was assaulted with a noise. A sharp, steady clanging noise, like a stream of suicidal birds meeting their ends against his bedroom window.

_That's either really loud rain, or some teenager doing an awful job of trying to break in_, he thought.

"_What_," he moaned, prising open his eyelids, "is going," hastily shutting them again, "on," and finally flopping over and burying his face piteously in his pillow.

Maybe the noise would stop, he thought.

Oh no. Life would not be so kind. The noise only grew louder, until he was absolutely certain someone was throwing rocks at his window. Boulders, by the sound of it.

Now he was pissed off. He yanked off his covers, squinting angrily at the red numbers on his clock before casting his gaze around the room for something-- anything-- to knock an intruder out with. A book? There were some stiff-looking dress shoes he wore to work. No, a voice told him, any blood might ruin the genuine leather, and they hadn't been cheap. If only he had a cane.

His bedside lamp would have to do; he'd always been afraid House would find out he still had it, anyways.

He'd received it as an award, and House had mocked him for weeks on end. _"Of all the lamps in the world, that is the _ugliest_ little devil I've ever seen. Can't you put a bag over it?"_ A little gold plaque on the marble base read "James Wilson, Hugh Davis Oncology Award, 2008." (House had squirted wine out his nose when he'd seen it-- he demanded to know why Wilson would want his name on any lamp, let alone that monstrosity.) Wilson knew it was the closest thing he had to a weapon, and he would prefer to break a perfectly good lamp than to be killed painfully-- and probably clumsily-- in his own apartment.

A scraping noise jolted him into action. He seized the lamp by its ugly, boxlike neck, and hefted it above his head like a war hammer. Inching slowly and silently against the wall, toward the offending window, he tried to get a look outside. All he could make out was the orange glow of a streetlamp-- no drugged-out teenage robbers or suicidal birds to be seen.

So now what? Did he wait until whatever it was managed to actually break in? Or did he open the window and hope his muscular shoulders and hunk of marble would scare them off? Maybe it wasn't anything-- perhaps he was just paranoid.

Oh no, there it was again. Definitely not paranoid. And there was a sound that was unmistakably the click of his window lock.

He flopped back against the wall, his breath leaving him in a gust. His fingers tightened around the lamp, clutching the cord with a crushing grip. How on earth had they opened his window without breaking it? It was completely---

Oh god. He heard the screen slide up, and he knew he had to do something. He could either run or bash their head in, but standing flat against the wall was not an option. Especially not now that they were halfway in his bedroom. He could see, in the dim orange half-light, a shoe... followed by a leg... Then finally a hand gripped the top of the window... an arm, an elbow... Gritting his teeth, he gathered all his strength and willpower, and stepped forward, swinging the lamp in a downwards arc just as the intruder's head poked in.

Somewhere between Wilson swinging the lamp and the lamp connecting, he had a very odd, unnrelated thought: _House has those same shoes_.

* * *

"I'm sorry, I really am." 

"What? Oh, I can't hear you, I've got this ice pack the size of Greenland smashed against my ear. Could you say that a little louder?"

"I'm _sorry_, I've apologized twenty times in the past ten minutes, but really. Think about this for a second: it's four-something in the morning. You wake up to the sound of rocks hitting your window, and you have no idea what is going on. Then you hear this scraping, and all you know is that someone is trying to get in your bedroom."

"Uh huh."

"In the dark."

"Uh huh."

"House... why??"

"Why what?"

Wilson buried his face in his hands, clutching his hair so tufts of it stood out crazily. House looked on, unconcerned. They were sitting on his couch, House sprawled out like he'd been hit by a bus right there in Wilson's living room. A swollen goose egg poked out above his ear, visible whenever House took the bag of ice off to make a point with both hands. Wilson shook his head.

"Why... everything. Why now, when you could have waited, what, four hours to see me? Why my bedroom window, when you could have knocked, or rang the doorbell? Or wow, even called me? Why at all?"

"Why, Jimmy, I was just getting around to that," House said with a flutter of his eyelashes, "I came to tell you about some exciting new products that I think will add to your changing look."

"I think that blow to the head did some damage. I'm going to have to send you to a home at last."

House whipped his head around, locking his widened eyes with Wilson's.

"You planned this, didn't you!"

"I wish."

At this, House's eyebrows rose, turning his forehead into a field of ridges. He raised his eyes to Wilson's again, calculating.

"I can't believe you still had that lamp."

Wilson was silent.

"You were hoping I never found out, weren't you?"

"Just because the lamp is smashed beyond repair, that doesn't mean I won't knock you out again."

For a moment, the two men were quiet, Wilson dozing off on the arm of the couch, House tilting his head back in staged pain.

"... Jimmy?"

Wilson snapped up to a seated position, wild-eyed. He looked panicked for a moment, searching for the source of the noise, until he saw House and slumped back against the cushions.

"What now?"

"It won't stop growing."

Wilson rolled his eyes.

"It _hurts_."

Then, after a moment:

"What if I have _cancer_?"

"You do such a good impression of a teenaged girl, House, you almost had me fooled. And then I saw the beard."

"Oh, I've seen 'em with beards before... European. It's all the rage over there."

House's eyelids were drooping steadily, and his voice was getting quieter with every word. Wilson couldn't stifle a smile while watching this silent struggle. The ice pack fell limply to House's thigh.

"No wonder the swelling won't go down-- you keep taking the compress off. Stop being such a girl."

"Mmphh," House said.

"Fine, give it to me."

House chose this moment to completely close his eyes. Wilson sighed, and grabbed the ice pack from its puddle on House's leg. If the goose egg was still there in the morning, he knew Cuddy and the ducklings would all get different stories of how it happened, involving either Wilson going mad, or making an attempt on his life out of jealousy. He'd better get the swelling down.

Wilson hesitated. There was something about the lines on House's face, the way his mouth was parted slightly in exhaustion. He reached up, and laid the ice against the purple blotch in House's hair. The older man made a small sound of protest, and turned his head away. Well, if he was going to be difficult about it.

Ignoring the moaning House emitted, he took him gently by the shoulders and eased him onto his side, bringing the older man's head to rest in his lap. He allowed his hands to smooth House's hair, steering clear of the offending bump. _He's half asleep anyway, I can tell him it was just a dream,_ he thought, his throat catching as the lines in House's face eased and disappeared, to be replaced with a soft almost-smile.

_I can't believe he trusts me like this_.

And then he knew.

Wilson draped an afghan around the both of them, tucking it gently around his sleeping friend, and slipped off into the world of dreams, where Gregory House would always make sense.


	2. Haiku War

A/N: This one's a lot longer than the other one, obviously. I had wayyy more fun writing this, too.

Much thanks to my beta, Aeiou the Consonantless Wonder!

And on to the fic!

* * *

Today Wilson thinks it must have started with magnetic poetry.

He supposed he shouldn't have been so surprised; after all, this was House, and House liked catching him off guard. He remembered stepping into his office the day after Christmas and seeing an innocent-looking box wrapped in brown paper, sitting next to his Zen garden. He'd picked up the tag and read "From Lesley". Strange, as he didn't know anyone named Lesley... Could it be a clinic patient? He usually remembered those. Lesley...Lesley...

While he was mentally going through all the women he had spoken to in the past three months, his door was flung open, and in stepped quite possibly the worst person to witness him unwrapping a gift. Wilson hastily tried to hide it behind a popsicle-stick picture frame, but he could tell from the delighted gleam in House's eye that it was no use.

"Why, bless my soul! The baldies love St. Jimmy so much they can't bear to stop at Christmas gifts--after all, there's Day-After Gifts, and Day-After-the-Day-After Gifts, and 'Hey, It's Seven O'Clock' Gifts--"

"It's ten o'clock, House."

"--all just to let you know that you touched their hearts enough to make them want to give you their hankies and chewed-up plushies--"

"No one's given me hankies! Now get out, I'm busy."

"Busy with the fruits of your own self-sacrifice, I'd say. I'll have you know, Cameron got me a really nice cappuccino-maker--and I've never made any sacrifices for her."

"Do you even like cappuccino?"

"When it's flavored with caring and tenderness and truckloads of unrequited love. Oops, that last one slipped out."

"Cameron gets you a cappuccino maker, and you assume she's in love with you?"

"No, I know so. It's from Europe, and there's _lots_ of love there."

"That's funny, I gave her one just like that last Christmas."

"Why Wilson. What are you insinuating? Cameron would never re-gift; she's too _dribbly."_

"Dribbly?"

"Well, yeah. Cameron's the type of woman who makes scrapbooks and saves all those stupid friendship forwards with the pictures of puppies and rainbows in a special folder. The 'every gift has some sentimental value' sort. _Dribbly."_

"Okay, Cameron's still in love with you, she happened to buy the exact same European cappuccino-maker she received last Christmas, and you're bored. I get it. Now get out."

House pointed at the poorly-hidden package with the end of his cane.

"Who's it from? Your secret girlfriend? A formerly bald child?"

"Lesley."

"Who's Lesley?"

"I have no idea."

"Wow," he said with mockingly wide eyes and a toss of his head, "Everyone really _does_ love you, Wilson. Even people you don't know."

"Everyone but my best friend, apparently. He didn't get me any European coffee-makers. He won't even get out of my office and leave me in peace."

"Touchy, touchy. Day after Christmas, Wilson, aren't you supposed to be brimming with good cheer?"

"I'm Jewish."

"No you're not, you're Princeton-Plainsborian. And what does it matter--you got presents, didn't you?"

"I'm not opening this in front of you, House."

House's eyebrows shot up, making his eyes gleam even brighter.

"What's the matter? Afraid I'll mock you relentlessly for whatever cheesy 'thank-you' or 'please-sleep-with-me' gift that is behind that especially ugly frame?"

Wilson paused, trying to make his expression as neutral as possible.

"No, I think you're just jealous I got 'thank-you' presents at all when the only thing you got was a 'please-don't-hurt-me' cappuccino-maker from your employee. I just don't want to cause you any more pain."

"I'm not jealous, I bought that for you."

Wilson gagged on his own saliva.

In the ten or so years he had known House, never had he heard those words come out of his mouth. 'I bought that for you.' That was impossible on _so_ many levels; it would imply not only that House had thought of someone besides himself, if even for a split second, but also that he had spent his own money, and not manipulated Wilson into shelling out. (Or was that what that fifty dollars was for, last Monday?) At first, Wilson had no idea what House was even talking about. The cappuccino-maker? Cameron? He couldn't possibly mean...

"What? Surprised? I mean, I did go all out, day after Christmas and all."

"But it says 'Lesley'," Wilson pointed out numbly.

"Yeah, that was so I could make fun of you, which I did, and then freak the hell out of you, which I also did. Two of my favorite things to do," House chirped, his eyes misting over. "Now I know why people feel so good after giving gifts."

"Right."

"So aren't you gonna open it? See by what token I've expressed my love for you?"

Wilson froze, immediately suspicious.

"It won't combust upon exposure to air. I promise."

Wilson sighed, and reached for the package, expecting to reveal some gift he'd expect to get from House--if House gave gifts--like inappropriate magazines or dead rats. But when he'd unwrapped a box of...

"Magnetic poetry?"

There it was, complete with a stand-up magnet board. Wilson slowly lifted two fingers to his jugular, to make sure the sheer corniness hadn't killed him.

"That's what you think," House sneered, "It's really Cuddy dressed _up_ as magnetic poetry."

Wilson sat back in his chair, leveling his gaze with House's. There was a reason for this, obviously, but he wouldn't find out until House decided to let him know. For now he could pretend he didn't know something was up.

"I never...guessed you'd get someone...such a...noncombustible gift, or something that didn't...kill people."

"No? I'm a complicated man, Jimmy. Maybe you'd know that if you paid more attention."

Wilson was too busy pretending to take this gift at face value to comment on the 'attention' statement (probably for the best).

"So what do I...do...with it?"

House reeled, feigning shock.

"What do you do with it? I thought there was only one use for magnetic poetry. Although if you wanted to get really creative..."

Wilson shook his head.

Once House had left, leaving the door predictably wide open behind him, he set the board and the box of words on his desk.

Two seconds later, he shoved it under his desk. This was insane. What crazy plan could House have in mind? Because as forgiving as Wilson tried to act sometimes, he'd have to have suffered head trauma to be anything but extremely suspicious. And fearful. For his life.

He sighed, setting the magnet board back on his desk. The only way this thing would end is if he let it happen first. Let House have his fun, and his life would possibly be normal for about a day and a half afterward.

"I could really go for a massage," Wilson murmured to his empty office.

The next day Wilson found the first message.

"As if you couldn't just email me, or call me?"

He was a bit too tired to pull off fake irritation today, so he settled for a slightly weirded-out bemusement.

"Hey," House said, bouncing his tennis ball around with his cane handle, "that was pure emotion. Such feelings cannot be expressed in an email."

"But they can be expressed on my desk?"

The tennis ball froze. House swiveled around to face him, looking positively wolfish.

"Oh, Jimmy. In so many ways."

Wilson hadn't bothered after that, just returned to his office where the magnet board sat staring at him. The words, bunched up in the top left corner of the board, read:

_Blessed James Wilson_

_His silk ties cause rioting_

_Pomade good for soul _

A haiku. He glared at the word "pomade". So what if he liked to look good and House was a slob? That wasn't even proper grammar. Funny how House's 'feelings' were expressed through mocking him, or trying to, at least.

Wilson frowned. A simple swipe would get rid of those words, but the board looked even more stupid when it was blank. Brushing his pomaded hair out of his eyes, he grabbed the board and the box, and set to work.

* * *

The moment House burst through the door, Wilson snapped into the practiced position of pretending to read a patient file. He could see House pause in the outskirts of his vision, tap his cane once, twice, three times, while he read the same line of symptoms over and over. He knew what House had come for; next to the haiku from this morning read:

_Crotchety cripple_

_With wit sharp as margarine_

_Nurses plot his death_

"Crotchety?"

Without looking up, Wilson remarked, "You're not the only one who has a gift for moving verse."

"Your adjectives are watered down and your meter is faulty. Try it again when you're sober. Or drunk--whichever you weren't."

"At least mine makes sense," Wilson murmured, eyes still scanning the file.

"Yeah, and at least I don't sit in my office pretending to read patient files from eight months ago."

Wilson looked up, but House was already out the door. And so it began.

* * *

By the time the third haiku turned up, Wilson had decided it was time to even out the field, and stuck another magnet board to the conference room wall. He waited for a reaction all day in his office--perhaps a dramatic flinging-open of his door, or a pelting-of-rocks at his window--but nothing came.

Although he was used to the games House liked to play, the fact that he'd honestly been waiting, and pretending to work, scared him just a little. To hide this, Wilson decided, he'd pretend he hadn't done anything until House brought it up. If he did.

Wilson was beginning to wonder if no one had noticed, somehow. Had House's patient occupied all of their thoughts so completely? He was behind Foreman, making small talk and deciding whether he wanted steak or just a salad, when he got his answer.

"So, the haikus?"

"Oh," Wilson said, feigning indifference. "Yeah, that started yesterday. House decided to get me a Christmas present so he could mock me with poetry."

He didn't miss the skyrocketing of Foreman's eyebrows at the words "Christmas present", and he felt a sudden urge to defend himself, or House, whichever it was.

"Okay, you know, the words 'Christmas present' are a stretch. It was the day after Christmas, and it was just to have one more way to bug me."

Foreman's eyebrows looked frozen in place under his hairline. Wilson couldn't explain why it was making him bristle, but it was as though Foreman had had some sneaking suspicion about Wilson, and this discussion about Christmas presents had confirmed it.

He thought about trying to resurrect some small talk, about a patient or the weather, but he had a feeling those eyebrows would be dislodged by nothing. Suddenly, rifling through his wallet took all of his concentration, and by the time he looked up again, Foreman was gone.

* * *

After that, House's reaction made Wilson just that much more paranoid.

They were in a rarely-used exam room, playing what Wilson had dubbed "Sit-Down Housean Raquetball", and House had taken to gleefully shouting out the score whenever he made a point.

"Ohh Wilson, that was twenty-four. You know what this means?"

"It means you've finally learned how to count?"

"No," he said with a grin, "it means that victory is within my grasp."

House tossed the ball up against the wall and Wilson dove for it.

He would wonder, later, why swivel chairs had to be so darn wobbly, especially in this hospital that could afford nice, stable chairs, even in the rooms no one used (or were supposed to use). Especially since the whole purpose of a "swivel chair" was to swivel people around smoothly, rather than to encourage clumsiness. It could have been user error, Wilson admitted, as he was pretty intent on stopping House's ego from inflating exponentially, as it had taken to doing. It could have been House--maybe his eyes had hypnotized him somehow. A little voice mumbled the word "fate", but Wilson promptly squashed it.

At any rate, the chair malfunctioned. As Wilson dove, the chair wheels locked, and he was dumped into a very startled House's lap. Simultaneously, he felt House's hands come up to steady his shoulders, and the lever protruding from House's chair gouged him in the side. He let out a pained yelp just as the hands on his shoulders dug their nails into his skin.

"Wilson! Leg! _Off!_ _Leg!"_ House howled, his features probably contorted in pain.

That was the precise moment Cameron chose to find them.

Wilson leapt awkwardly out of House's lap as though his legs had sprouted needles, landing hard on his butt several feet away. House's hands had moved to grip his right thigh, and was glaring at Cameron with the same intensity that Wilson could feel his face flushing.

"Wh--House," she stammered, fumbling for purchase. "We uh... I didn't th-- I tried... We paged you," she finished lamely.

House, predictably, overcame his pain enough to seize the opportunity. His eyes melted until they sparkled cartoonishly, and he sent Wilson a sickly sweet look, full of obvious meaning and adoration. He fluttered his eyes at Cameron, who was quickly regaining her calm.

"You know," he simpered, "that poem we annotated this morning instead of diagnosing the patient? That was the handiwork of Dr. James Wilson, Boy Wonder Oncologist, Three-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner...and the wind beneath my wings."

So he _had_ seen.

"Can you win the Pulitzer Prize more than once?" Wilson asked doubtfully.

"Not sure."

"That's great," Cameron snapped. "We need you."

House swiveled to meet Wilson's eyes again, tilting his head, as though the oncologist were a very fluffy kitten, and he wanted to take him home.

_"Wilson_ needs me more."

* * *

After Wilson had put up the magnet board in the conference room, things got stranger. House went out of his way, as usual, to prove he was one step ahead. And this happened at very inopportune times.

First there was the haiku scribbled in Sharpie across his red coffee mug (something about "Columbian legumes" and underpaid coffee growers) which he could not, after any amount of scrubbing, get off. (He resolved to get a new mug after the looks it attracted from the ducklings.) Then there were the slips of paper he found sporadically in his desk drawers, which he had locked. Then there was the haiku _in_ his coffee. This was especially disgusting, because he didn't notice it until he'd already finished; it was taped to the inside of his mug, and he could hardly make out the words.

The worst came around four o'clock, when Cuddy clacked into his office.

"Wilson," she barked, "did you write that haiku in House's conference room?"

"Yes," he said slowly.

Her eyes flashed with a deadly gleam.

"He told me you did, and I didn't believe him. He said to ask you. I can't believe it. These," she said, snatching the board off Wilson's desk, "are ridiculous, and if you insist on acting like second-graders, I'll have to confiscate them. There's no time-out in the hospital, although I'm thinking of getting one…"

"I thought you agreed about the bike," Wilson muttered, referring to the haiku.

Cuddy stopped.

"The bike?"

"Yeah," Wilson frowned, "That was what the haiku was about, I thought that was obvious… Wait. Did House change--"

Cuddy rolled her eyes and swept out of Wilson's office, already howling at House down the hall.

To make up for this, Wilson paid Cameron to tape a derogatory haiku to House's back (which he did not fall for), plastered House's bike with them, and faxed them out endlessly to House's office.

Lame payback, but it was something.

That evening, he let himself into his apartment, and collapsed on his bed in the dark. After the day he'd had, his mind was mentally counting out the syllables of every thought that came to him. Sighing, he wriggled out of his tie, fumbled with his shoes, and tossed them onto the floor. They made an odd sound against the carpet. Like crunching paper.

"No," Wilson breathed. "No way."

There it was, on the bottom of his shoe. Another haiku.

He snatched up his phone from the bedside table, his fingers flying across the keypad. It rang...and rang...and finally, he heard, "This is a machine. Pretend it is I, Greg House. Haikus only, though."

"House," he barked. "House! I know you're there!"

There was the sound of a phone being picked up, and then, "Wilson. That was only six syllables---shame on you."

Wilson couldn't help the grin that edged its way onto his face.

"Yeah, I've lost my appetite for haikus since finding the one you managed to tape to my shoe. How...?"

"Magicians never reveal their secrets."

"House! This is honestly creepy," Wilson whined.

Over the phone, Wilson could tell House was grinning, too.

"Just wait 'til you find the one in your toothpaste."


End file.
